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We visited Tapiola high school the 26th of April, when we had a set-up session in three courses. The teachers participating the pilot are Pia Liimatainen, Hanna Kokkonen and Vuokko Leislahti. They are going to use EdVisto in their courses of music, mother tongue and social studies. The teachers got interested in EdVisto after hearing about it from city of Espoo, which is one of the partners of xEdu Accelerator.

During our school visit, we tested creating videos in three classes at first so that each class had its own “tutor” presenting EdVisto, and later a bit more freely checking how it goes in each class. The students were using different devices and browsers, and we phased problems with some of them. We figured out that the problems were mostly related to iPads’ unupdated browsers, so we updated them to newest version. After that the service worked normally.

The technical issues work as good reminders that it’s important to update the schools’ devices regularly, so that you can get the best out of them. The visit was also an important lesson for our team to know different browser version behaviour, and after the session we did some changes to EdVisto, so that it will be working also with older versions.

Lehtikuusi Elementary School had two classes excited about joining the EdVisto pilot. Fourth and fifth grade teachers Anna Aarnio and Aurora Kryssi are particularly interested in the creation of animated pictures. Anna Aarnio has followed the development progress of EdVisto from start and her views have been very helpful in the development of the platform.

We were visiting the school a few days ago, when we tried out how to create videos in both classes. Our purpose was to get students to know basics about video creation process and to give a preview about how it is going to happen using EdVisto. The fourth graders created video stories about the topic “My school day”. It was nice to see how quickly the students planned their stories and went also outside the classroom to do the filming. One group created a clear-structured story with a plot about their typical school day by just taking photos and organizing them to right order in EdVisto editor. Only the background music was unfortunately missing from the video due to lack of time in that session. Adding the music seemed to be important feature for students. Usually creating a video story takes some time, so it’s recommended to use more time than one lesson to it, as the process can consist of group formation, topic selection, script-writing, research and of course, filming and story editing. In the other class, the fifth graders came up with the idea about making an instructive video about how to tie shoe laces. During the day, it was a pleasure to note how easily also the younger students learn to use the platform.

The Accelerator Program bringing together tech companies and pedagogical expertise has started. X Edu has selected its startups and the first event was hosted on February 15, 2016. The opening event discussed the role of the Accelerator in the startups’ development. A warm welcome was extended and introductions were made among the 11 startups selected from 100+ applications.

EdVisto is being testing by two courses at Haaga-Helia. The Creative Corporate & Marketing Communication course led by Kevin Gore, Matti Helelä and Anne Korkeamäki gave important feedback about the concept of video storytelling and how they wanted to incorporate it into their studies.

From Espoo’s Omnia teachers and students from both the adult education and vocational education departments. Omnia’s IT and mobile specialist, Pete Stockley has actively followed EdVisto’s development and given excellent feedback.

From Omnia’s vocational education, teacher Kaisa Jussila and two of her business groups have joined a first pilot project. We got to visit one of Kaisa’s groups in the beginning of February and it was interesting to follow the groups’ projects. The course is part of the Finnish “Young Business Owner” concept, i.e. the students have their own practice businesses that they can use apply learnings from the course in real life, here with the help of EdVisto. Kaisa has been active also on a personal level to test and give feedback on EdVisto since the beginning of the year, which has been very appreciated.

Omnia’s adult education group from the wood construction course are represented with two teachers, Mona Olander and Juhani Horelli, in the lead. The project is part of a specialization on “Technical design and prototype production”. Professional designers are also part of the project and later in the spring possible collaboration partners from Estonia.

During the early spring, we’ve visited Mona’s group and assisted in the use of the video platform, which is planned to document the entire construction process. The group has given important feedback about user experience. We look forward to follow the progress.

EdVisto will soon initiate its official pilots, while part of the pilot groups have already started their video projects. Last Monday, Joni AlWindi and Anne Kuokkanen from our team visited Haaga-Helia, where International Sales and Marketing students will get to know EdVisto and video storytelling as a learning method during the spring.

Teachers of the course are Marika Alhonen and Sirpa Lassila. The purpose is that students will learn how to use service design for collecting and analyzing customer insight, and that they will realize how development of services is being made in practice. On the other hand, EdVisto will also get better understanding of behaviour of users and potential customers as well as ideas for further development, so the students will get to see how the aims will be fulfilled mutually. About 40 students involved in the pilot will utilize EdVisto for documenting their semester project, and about 10 students will practice the methods of customer insight by taking advantage of other pilot users from Haaga-Helia and other schools through interviews, for instance.

Our visit to Haaga-Helia showed how talented the students are with the use of new devices and technical services. After a brief presentation about EdVisto, the students knew immediately what devices to use and how to sign up to platform. Even though the group was relatively big, getting started with the platform went amazingly well and quickly. One of the reasons for that might be that the students seemed to be genuinely motivated and engaged for learning. We are looking forward to hearing experiences from other pilot groups as well, and to see how EdVisto inspires also younger students for digital storytelling.

From research platform to exciting learning tool

EdVisto, previously known as MoViE*, has its origin in research projects, where the purpose has been to research how video stories are created and shared, as well as learning through mobile devices. From the start, MoViE was planned and used in research at Tampere Technical University’s campus in Pori. MoViE was developed to work as a research platform to study phenomena related to learning. In 2008-2009, the first version of MoViE’s mobile version was created. Later, the development of the platform was continued, and it has been used in Helsinki University’s CICERO Learning Network research in under various Finnable2020 and SAVI (Science Across Virtual Institutes) research projects. In 2014, an additional TUTL (from research to business) project was initiated, where the objective was to create a commercially viable version of the pedagogical platform.

Research origin and new learning ecosystem

The idea behind the planning of MoViE was born by Professor Jari Multisilta’s visit to Standford University in 2007. The visit was a part of a Tekes-funded project. Based on conversations with researchers at Standford University’s H-STAR Institute, an emerging research area was recognized, being the use of social media platforms through mobile devices and especially the utilization of videos in social media services. Standford University’s earlier developed idea of the Diver-video editing software was developed foward towards the social media direction, where the idea of MoViE was born. ((Multisilta, Mäenpää & Suominen, 2010.)

Jari Multisilta and Marko Suominen presented the starting points of MoViE in 2009 in their published article. The first camera phones had arrived to the marketplace about nine years earlier, and now a need was identified to develop a video application adapted for the smartphone. There was already plenty of research studying how pictures were taking with camera phones in normal fashion, but how video stories were created from several video clips had not been studied much. The mobile application version of MoViE was piloted in 2008 during the Pori Jazz festival, where 16 people tested the application by filming their own festival experience. (Multisilta & Suominen, 2009.) At the same time a worldwide mobile application boom was happening: Apple published its application store, AppStore, in 2008, which was followed by the other operating systems were quick to follow.

MoViE was used in the Tekes-funded Finnable2020 project in two different phases. In 2011, the first phase was composed by four work packages, which were: Boundless Classroom, Teacher’s Toolkit, Exergames in Learning, and Emergent Learning Technologies and Communities. MoViE was specifically used in the Boundless Classroom work package, in a subproject about Digital storytelling. The second phase of the Finnable2020 project was started in the beginning of 2014, and its subprojects were: The Innovative School, Multifaceted Learning Materials, and Emergent Learning Technologies and Communities. MoViE was also used in the SAVI research project, which was initiated in 2013. SAVI is a Finnish-American project, where the object of interest is learning in natural science subjects.

* EdVisto’s previous version was called MoVIE, which stands for Mobile Video Experience